Former U.S. spy linked 9/11 terrorists to Canada

There has been a lot of huffing and puffing in the media and in Ottawa and Washington this week about the "9/11 myth." The myth, born in the hours after the terrorist attacks on the entrepreneurial, political and military epicentres of the United States, is that several of the 19 murderous fanatics who orchestrated the mayhem on Sept. 11, 2001, slipped into America from Canada.

Two men identified as hijackers Mohammed Atta, right, and Abdulaziz Alomari pass through airport security at Portland (Maine) International Jetport on Sept. 11, 2001. They did not enter the U.S. from Canada.

There has been a lot of huffing and puffing in the media and in Ottawa and Washington this week about the "9/11 myth." The myth, born in the hours after the terrorist attacks on the entrepreneurial, political and military epicentres of the United States, is that several of the 19 murderous fanatics who orchestrated the mayhem on Sept. 11, 2001, slipped into America from Canada.

That myth was given renewed life earlier this week when the newly minted and haltingly ill-informed U.S. homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, parroted the falsehood in a CBC interview.

Napolitano's remarks have provoked a flurry of diplomatic backtracking and tsk-tsking from the usual political and so-called national security pundits who populate the airwaves these days.

But lost in all the hyperbole and the media-propelled outrage has been an exploration of the myth's genesis. That's not surprising because many of the players in the media and in political capitals now hurling stones were complicit in promoting and providing sustenance to the myth. The hypocrisy has, at times, been breathtaking.

How do I know this?

I was one of the many reporters on both sides of the 49th parallel who relied – regrettably – on the top-tier and still unrepentant U.S. spy who was largely responsible for giving birth to the myth.

On Sept. 12, 2001, Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA chief of counter-intelligence used the press as his megaphone to tell the world thirsting for information about the hijackers that five of them had entered Maine from Canada via Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and/or a remote border point near Jackman, Maine, several hundred kilometres southeast of Quebec City.

"What we know is that a five-man cell came to Maine from Canada," Cannistraro told a Montreal newspaper. "Now obviously there are two ways of doing it, by ferry or by land. I don't know which one it was but I know that the investigators believe they came from Canada."

The 27-year CIA veteran said the same thing with the same conviction again and again to any newspaper, television and radio reporter who had his number.

In my front-page dispatch quoting Cannistraro, I qualified the ex-intelligence officer's certainty at the urging of a more skeptical colleague who insisted that we include a quote from a Canadian security official who bluntly declared that Cannistraro was wrong.

"They didn't hijack Canadian planes," the rankled Canadian spook told us at the time. "They got through airport security in the U.S., not here."

Unfortunately, we buried that quote and, as a result, the truth.

In any event, when more doubt was raised about Cannistraro's information by Maine police and the state's governor, the ex-spy and long-time ABC World News consultant on espionage and terrorism stuck to his story like glue, insisting that his sources had no reason to mislead him and that the governor was out of the loop.

The damage, however, was done. A myth had begun to take root as Cannistraro's explosive tale garnered instantaneous media traction and political momentum.

Indeed, the story offered ready ammunition to the predictable posse of Canadian and American politicians who routinely promoted the convenient and hollow talking point that this nation's "porous" borders and "lax" immigration laws were responsible for the terrorist sieve otherwise known as Canada. (That I played a role in providing fodder – even on a solitary occasion – for this hysterical rhetoric remains among the most gnawing regrets of my career.)

Then Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day (who would later be appointed to cabinet by Prime Minister Stephen Harper) seized upon Cannistraro's story as unimpeachable evidence that Canada was, in fact, a "soft spot" for terrorism and he called on the Liberal government to immediately undertake an overhaul of Canada's immigration and security policy.

"We know," Day said a few days after the attacks, "that Canada is seen as a soft spot ... of undesirable people, possibly criminal elements, being able to gain access to our country."

Today, in the aftermath of Napolitano's grating comments, Harper and some of his cabinet members who once condemned Canada as a "soft spot" for terror, have been busy instructing their man in Washington to disabuse the Obama administration of the notion that Canada was or remains a soft spot for terrorists.

In other words, Harper has mobilized the diplomatic and political machinery at his disposal to try to finally shatter a frustrating myth that senior members of his government once enthusiastically promoted.

In time, it became apparent that Cannistraro and his sources had peddled crock. To my knowledge, the former spy has not admitted his colossal error and it certainly hasn't prevented reporters from continuing to seek him out for advice, counsel and his ever-ready quotes.

I learned my lesson. I never contacted Cannistraro again having concluded that despite his credentials he was unreliable. Unfortunately, the myth he spun lives on in the minds of Napolitano and many other American decision-makers.

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